A Light Rain
by ButtercupSaiyan
Summary: "You could ask me now why I am afraid of the daylight, the pale brightness that washes out the world [...]"
1. Chapter One

Chapter One  


You could ask me now why I am afraid of the daylight, the pale brightness that washes out the world, and why I tremble beneath the shadowed coolness of an oak tree. I can not tell you why, only that the sun hurts my eyes badly, and that I wait. The wind whistles past me, covering my face with my own short, dark hair. 

I wait for the dimness before the storm, when everything white glows and I am no longer terrified of the reality of the daylight. In the dimness, I can interpret things as I please, and shadows soften the harshness of the depth of the woods. Even now, I can run my hands over the oak tree catcyns littering the ground, thick with autumn leaves, deep with the obscene, moist matings of fungus and algae over the rotting skeletons of woods. At least I cannot see it. 

Even now ... 

My sister calls for me, holding her arms vainly above her head. Her blonde hair and childish blue dress are plastered against her, as the light rain begins to fall. "Buttercup! Buttercup!" 

I stand up, as heavy droplets seep through the oak and begin to soak me. I cry back to her, and follow the sound of her receding voice back to the camp. The trees are copsed thickly, and the rain blurs them, and the shadows love to dance along them, beneath the tattered ceiling of leaves. I can't help gazing up at the multitude of trembling leaves waving shyly at me through the rain. Dimness and brightness whips around their edges, a ghostly cavalscade, echoes of light reflected through rain, waxing and waning ... they wave and cackle, laughing, faster ... 

My sister, finally impatient, has her hand on my shoulder, and her eyes are narrowed. "Buttercup, what is wrong with you? Standing out here in the rain?" 

"Ah-mmm ..." I respond quietly, my mind empty of words. The rain feels so cool and good against me, and there is no sun to watch me, only shadows to surround me. 

"Come on, Buttercup." 

The tent flap before me lifts, the canvas rustling softly, and I am sat down onto a dry sleeping bag. I look sadly up at the roof of the tent, wanting to feel the rain against my skin again. It has been such a long day, such a long time, and it is hard for me to relax anymore. A rough towel is rubbed strongly against me, drying me off, and I hear a curt sigh to let me know that such a break of solitude was not welcome. 

My other sister, Blossom, only looks at me blandly. 

"It is time for lunch, couldn't you remember?" 

"I'm not hungry." 

I hunch down into the sleeping bag, and I stare dumbly at the side of the tent. It is Sunday, and our weekend is almost over. We will have to head home again soon, and I dread the terrible noise and chaos of the city again. Many days, I wish I had an entire world, an entire life to myself. 

On the side of the tent, the rain plutters and plunks softly against the waterproof canvas, and forms strange shapes. The droplets clump and part in an oily sort of dance, as if they wished to form something, but gravity consistantly broke them, and they struggled to shape, again and again, rising and falling ... 

There is a tiny, soft pitter beneath the plunking of the rain, but I shake my head. It must only be the cackling of leaves, or raindrops softly hitting the ground. I can still feel my sisters staring at me, against my back, and I stubbornly close my eyes to shut out their unwanted attention. 

There is only the soft pitter, patter, pitter, patter, _plunk! _of rain, and the dimness, and I squint harder, thinking of solitude. 

When I roll over again, Bubbles and Blossom are still staring at me, their eyes half-lidded with a benign sort of concern. 

But, no, I open my eyes, and they are not in the tent. The tent is still empty, and the rain has stopped. It is much brighter now, and I rub my eyes furiously. There are merry sounds outside, the pleasant laughter between people, and I crawl out into the daylight, my mind still fuzzy from sleep. The arms of my sisters are there to surround me and guide me to the picnic table where fresh sandwiches await. 

A dark-haired man who I call father in my head but Professor outloud leans over. He is smiling cheerfully, as if to welcome me back to the safety of the waking world. 

"Lunch?" I try. 

"Dinner," he corrects me. 

"It seems like it's only 2 or 3 o' clock," I say, looking up at the sky. He follows my gaze, uncomprehending. There is no sun out, the sky is all gray clouds, but it appears as bright as early afternoon. 

"It's almost 5:30," he says, consulting his watch.   
  
I can only shake my head dumbly. As beautiful and quiet as it is out here, there is no concept of time. Only human habit can bring that. I can still feel the eyes of my sisters, and it feels like they are all staring silently at me as I eat. They have already eaten. 

"What?" I rumble, perturbed. A simple meal should not be a spectacle! The Professor lowers his voice and head, as if afraid the trees will object to loud noise, or that I will break like a wine glass in an operahouse. 

"Are you alright, honey?" 

"Why does everyone so worried? What is wrong? Do I have something on my face?" I ask. They begin to carefully look away, and Bubbles nibbles distractedly at some stray crumbs on her plate. I feel frustrated, and it must show plainly on my face, for none of them wish to answer. 

I stare at my hands, but I have finished eating the sandwich mechanically, and there is nothing left, although I do not remember consuming it or savoring the taste. I start back to the tent, for lack of a better destination. My blonde sister stirs, her eyes flickering momentarily to life again. 

"You look awful, Buttercup." 

Her head inclines away again, the moment gone, and I continue to the tent as if nothing was said. I'll just take a bath when I get home. Three days of camping without a bath or shower hit me harder than anyone else, I suppose. I don't delicately glow like my sisters do, I sweat. 

I find myself back at my sleeping bag with nothing to do. I dig out a comic book, trying to immerse myself in the adventures of the hero, but my mind is too distracted for that. No one brought a mirror, and their stares are burned into the back of my mind. What could hold their attention so raptly? The rain begins again, promising an end to an extremely dreary day. 

My sisters make their way into the tent damply, and hunch down to warm up inside. As some point, I must have begun to relax again, as I read the dialogue between the hero and villain grow more heated. 

Beneath my elbow was a cold puddle of water. This not in itself inherently frightening, although the coolness certainly was shocking. 

I had the distinct impression that the water _clung _to me vicariously, and the patter beneath the rain, the sound of a waterfall perhaps, rose into an unholy crescendo, slowly took shape into - 

Light. 

Tears of terror were in my eyes even as I screamed, they had burst out and down my face, for in that instant was a glimpse of something unfathomable, that I cannot grip even now, that my mind slides around. That instant of horror was swallowed up into the bliss of forgotten memory, even within the second that I sensed it. 

My sisters yelped in adject, shared fright, looking around wildly for the source. I gasped something mundane, about the waterproof tent leaking finally and the wetness of the rain on me. I don't know if they ever believed me in that second, for the Professor burst into the tent, clearly expecting an emergency. 

There was only a sort of dumb silence, until everyone crumbled into nervous laughter at the tension. I found my laughter helpless, automatic, high-pitched with hysteria as if it were being pulled out of me outside of my own control. I shook and writhed and gasped for breath, clutching my sides, laughing. I can't imagine what was so funny, except I kept on remembering the terrified expressions on everyone's faces. 

The Professor, soaking wet, states, "I think it's time to go home. It's raining very hard now." 

I am ushered into the rain again, shivering with cold, and we walk through the wet, damp woods toward the parking lot. Oh, in hindsight, forethought is beautiful! If only we had remembered to bring umbrellas. 

Each drop of water I am aware of as it rolls down my body, and soaks into my clothing. It seems to be unnaturally wet, soaking into everything around us and on us. I feel a great sense of relief when we reach the car, out of the rain, out of the moist crunchings of forest leaf litter. The car rumbles and shudders to life, and the gentle clack of seat-belts buckling echoes. We pull out of the parking lot, and head back to Townsville proper. 

I start laughing softly. 

Because, you see, in the darkness of the seat in front of me, I knew that a little shadow was peering out at me. I think it was at that moment that I realized I was quite insane, for how can there be such a thing? I can look at the windows of the car, and still! The water is trying to form into shapes, but the wind is constantly stopping it. 

The car is going to stop, and the wind will be gone. The clouds will clear up, and there will be light! 

And in that light - 

"Buttercup." 

- will be - 

"Buttercup." 

- that thing we all - 

"STOP LAUGHING, BUTTERCUP!" Blossom screamed, her face nearly touching mine, her hands clutched painfully against my shoulders, and I stop to gasp for breath before erupting into new multitudes. She winces at the saliva, and I finally quiet down, still tittering an uneven intervals. 

The trees on the side of the road stop moving, and the car stops shaking. 

The droplets clinging to the windows have regrouped into a throbbing, pulsating amoeba around the car, on the ground. Hot, slick shadows cling to me, my clothing still wet, seeping into me. 

... I don't suppose I ever mentioned why I don't like baths? 

Always, every time I came near the bathtub, there would be a little shadow watching me out of the drain. In my youth, I only knew the vague discomfort of being watched, by those lustful eyes. I would rather glory in the grime, the smell of battle rather than yield to be forced into that still water where the shadows would watch me. 

He's been growing - ever since - toying with us, distracting us. How should we have known that one day he would tire when he realized he couldn't win his games anymore? Oh, bliss of oblivion, that we would have lived in insanity and misery rather than the sanity of knowledge! 

For there, outside the window, the rain is of liquid strings and tendons dripping from the clouds. They cling to the earth, and shudderingly rise from the grass. The dark mass, the writhing gray mist of the shadows eebs out and away. He drops his living entrails. Him! _Him!_

I know once, in that singular instant of first light, that we were an unnatural thing upon this earth. But there was the dark, handsome face and stare of terror that drove the thought out of my mind, back into the forgotten. 

I can feel it now, the consciousness beneath, that was always laughing at us and our vain attempts. 

I had always known that we must return from whence we came. Even the Professor, in that stark moment of horror, foolish conduit, knew that we were _not meant to be_! 

The water rises, a veritable tidal wave of primordial slime to engulf the small machine that harbors us. My sisters struggle valiantly now to scream or react, but it is too late. It is already sliding through the cracks, and the living ooze upon us drags and calls, like iron to a magnet. 

Oh, light! It burns, it burns! 

I could still feel the paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter even as I died. 


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  


"Welcome," a low voice purrs into my ear. 

"I don't remember saying thank you," I respond, not daring to open my eyes. 

For I feel nothing, nothing at all, and the complete absence of any kind of stimulation, a sort of indefinite waiting. Before that, one knows constant stimulation, before agreeing to die at the end of every day. 

I have no concept of how long the wait was, if time existed at all. There simply was, quite suddenly, a raw wet caress against my cheek, the feel of a living thing lacking skin. My eyes fly open with the gasp of shock, of existance again. 

I gaze into a pair of inverted eyes. They emit the low, hideous phosphorescence of fungus and soft-bodied things that live in complete abyss, where light is unknown. Here, darkness. 

He is looking at me curiously, above, upside-down from me. I gather, after some intermittable amount of time, that he possesses a substance. It has no warmth or motion, but is a blackness deepened. 

"Is it too dark for you now?" he asks congenially, effeminately. 

"No," I whisper, and my voice sounds very faint indeed. 

There is light, a harsh whiteness that burns even through closed eyelids, protected additionally by hands. It seers in its unnatural intensity, its raw power. It is as if it is of a spectrum that would be found at the edges of the universe, were we ever to pierce our isolated bubble. There is in it both the coolness of creation, and the warmth of destruction. It is not meant for mortal senses. 

He is there, the only thing that can be looked upon with safety, illuminated with a terrible androgynous sort of beauty to his features. It is unearthly now, transcending human duality. The form he wore on earth was only a parody of this, a weak amalgamation. 

"What could possibly you want with me?" I say, and am ashamed that it comes out weak and groveling. 

"What, indeed!" it laughs, baring glittering teeth like a smile. "Because I want you. Because you are a challenge - you three are all a challenge. The irony is I created the last challenge to myself." 

"It's not true!" I cry desperately, "Your only way is lies and dishonesty!" 

"Is it?" it asked, its voice taking on a deep masculine rumble, "I find the truth to be the most effective, in the end." 

His touch is upon me again, tracing the contours of my body, the length of my limbs, the shape of my face, leaving a rank moisture behind. I can only emit a sort of stifled whimper as he sorts through my insides, violating my internal viscera in the most obscene manner possible, as if to divulge a secret hidden from him. 

Then he was there in my mind, the intimacy of my being, of my memories. He could, conceivably, cause me endless agony, but I find merely the fact that I cannot weep here crueler than anything. I cannot even cry for my sister's trials, of which I know nothing of. 

He cast me aside, disgusted, and thundered monstrously: "_You have no face! _That is why you cannot cry, ill-gotten miscreant, pervert of hubris! What are you?" 

"You didn't find what you wanted," I gloated, aware that he was at the weakness. His eyes blazed. 

He is there, up against me again, voice soft and feminine and coaxing. "I got what I wanted. And I will have it." 

"Then do it," I urge him. "All you are is empty threats." 

"**YOU FOOL!** I am all that there is! There is nothing beyond me!" The light became even brighter, washing me away, until I felt like a shadow myself. He softened, growing smaller and the light faded into the gray of dawn. 

"Go back. Tell yourself it was only a bad dream." 

"I will tell myself everything you said was true," I agreed finally. "And that it is all pointless to me." 

He shrieked in a wordless rage, a banshee wail ending into the range of the inaudible. Everything went dark again. 

* * * 

  
"Professor!" 

The word was on my lips, before I was even aware, and I felt my body go stiff with alarm as I sat up. There was a soft pattering. But, no, I am alone in the comfort and safety of my own bedroom at home. 

Home. 

I sit there, confused. My red-haired sister, Blossom, floats in, safe and intact as you please. She whoops happily, and Bubbles joins her through the doorway in a fading blur of blue light. 

"She's all right, Professor! She's up!" the blonde cries out back into the depths of the house. 

The Professor looms in the doorway now, worry written all over his face. He crushes me into a protective hug, sobbing with relief. I cough slightly, and he releases me quickly. 

"We thought you were dead," Bubbles says suddenly. Blossom hushes her, but she keeps on going, stubbornly. "You were laughing, and laughing, and then you fainted, and nobody could wake you up ..." 

"Well, I'm alright now!" I insist. Everyone seems to relax, as the strings of tension are cut. I hop up out of bed with the Professor's hands steadying my descent. I squirm angrily. 

"I'm fine!" I try to ease my way out the doorway, but my sisters catch me into a tight mutual embrace. I try to keep my sigh to myself, and squeeze them both to please them. I have to get outside. I make my way down the stairs, and out onto the porch. Their eyes follow me, but I am not intercepted. 

I thought that I heard the rain earlier, and I hold out my arms, walking forward, feeling the rain on my body again. It feels like water, pure water, natural water. 

"Professor, she's standing in the rain," Bubbles complains, confused. 

"I know," he says, and his voice is shaky. 

I feel another person come up behind me, and an arm lands heavily on my shoulder. 

Breath tickles my ear in an intimate whisper, pitched low enough so that I am the only recipient. Blossom's voice is thick with strength and emotion: "It wasn't a dream." 


End file.
